Capabilities as Menus: A Non-Welfarist Basis for QALY Evaluation

Han Bleichrodt and John Quiggin

No 151199, Risk and Sustainable Management Group Working Papers from University of Queensland, School of Economics

Abstract: Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) are the most widely-used measure of health in cost–effectiveness analysis and cost–benefit analysis. Within a welfarist framework QALYs are consistent with people’s preferences under stringent assumptions. Several authors have argued that QALYs are a valid measure of health within an extra-welfarist framework. This paper studies the applicability of QALYs within the best-known extra-welfarist framework, Sen’s capability approach. We propose a procedure to value capability sets and provide a foundation for QALYs within Sen’s capability approach. We show that, under appropriate conditions, the ranking of capabilities can be represented locally by a QALY measure and that a shadow price for QALYs can be defined.

Keywords: Health; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2011-10
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Capabilities as menus: A non-welfarist basis for QALY evaluation (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uqsers:151199

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.151199

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